Beautiful Prose - a book that will probably make you Cry!

Artichoke Hearts

Sita Brahmachari has written a beautiful, poignant story about a month in the life of a shy girl called Mira.  It is written a lot like a diary - following Mira as she tries to steer a safe path through the trials of being part of a hectic family, being tormented by peers at school and preparing to lose her Nana (with whom she has a very special bond) to terminal cancer.  Mira learns about keeping secrets, observing the world like a writer, and she starts to fall in love - getting stronger and braver all the while.

Mira's grandmother is a very complex and wise woman, with a lot  to teach us all;  she faces death with great dignity and I definitely - as Sita warned in her Foreword "disappeared" into this book and came out "a slightly different person".  The characters in this book are vividly drawn and the reader is likely to find him/herself completely drawn into Mira's chaotic family life as they watch Mira grow in confidence and begin to spread her wings as a teenager.

This book is a winner of the Waterstone's Children's Book Prize - but it is a valid read for grown ups - particularly helpful if you are coping with a loved one who has a terminal illness.  Sita has so clearly written this book from personal experience and I found her outlook on the experience both grounded and spiritual - and that's not any easy combination to achieve.

TV Recommendations -  I have 2 quite light, humorous ones for you:

Me & Mrs Jones [BBC1] - which is a lot like the Slummy Mummy column, or the book I told you about in my previous blog.  A single mother - primary school age kids and an older son from a different relationship, an ex-husband who still treats the house like his home (he has an odd, controlling Swedish girlfriend) and there is a single date she meets at the school date who is keen to get to know her better.  If this wasn't enough to juggle with- her son has brought home a friend and the sparks are flying between Mrs Jones and him too (the gorgeous grey-eyed Nathan from Misfits!!! woo hoo!)

Second is Switch [ITV2]  which is about 4 girls in their early 20s, living in a flat in Camden and doing witchcraft in a modern world.   Using withcraft to take short-cuts and fix relationship troubles gets them into all sorts of scrapes.  If you've got half an hour to spare, either of these is worth a watch!

Snuggle up with a book & a cuppa!

Laugh out Loud Reading Matter!

I am making no apologies for the 'chick lit' genre of the book I have just finished reading "Confessions of a Demented Housewife - the Celebrity Year" - it is great to just drop into a book like this, it is the literary equivalent to putting on your comfy trackie bottoms, cosy socks or slippers and curling up in an armchair with your favourite cuppa in your hand.  This book will make you laugh, it will probably give you glimpses of yourself lurching through your own 'juggling' life none to serenely and - the way it is told - it will make you want to shout out to warn the heroine (Susie) that something bad "is behind her" as if you were watching a pantomime!!

Susie doesn't entirely enjoy being a housewife and mother, she is always looking for something more exciting round the corner - in the first book "The Secret Diary of a Demented Housewife" she got a little more excitement than she bargained for when she began to exchange pleasantries with Lone Father at toddler group and is soon tempted to by his smouldering texts and his flirtatious ways.  In this, the sequel, Susie - being the kind of person who is always measuring herself up against her 'peers' and finding herself slightly lacking - is determined to get pally with the new celebrity mum at her children's school.  As the reader, you hear all the alarm bells ringing  which Susie does not,  the glamorous new mum using her as unpaid babysitter, her husband changing careers as part of a mid-life crisis, yet you watch as she deals with it all in her own enimitable style - plenty of times events seem to take a turn you could not have visualised, but Susie bobs to the top again, like a cork on choppy seas.

The First book - True in So Many Ways!

If you like Sophie Kinsella's 'Shopaholic' series and laugh out loud when reading 'Bridget Jones' Diary' I think this novel will be right up your street, and if you have  a child who thinks it would be more fun if he/she was a dog (as I did with my second) you will feel instantly bonded with Susie!




Boo Hoo!!  No more Revenge on TV - as I watched the season finale of it last  night!! Wow!  It certainly went out with a bang!!  Some loose ends tied, some left hanging and a few new twists of plot to worry about until the next season begins.   I wont spoil the plot for devotees of the series who haven't seen the last one yet, but I will confess to having a big old crush on Nolan now - I never could see the appeal of Daniel but now Nolan has replaced Jack on my list of people about whom I want Emily to 'wake up and realise how much he loves her' - especially as his people interaction skills have improved 100% during the season!!  Can hardly wait till it is back on screen again.

The Debutante - I urge you to read it!!!

If you love the 'flapper' era and glamour and mystery and you know that love & attraction has a dark side - I highly recommend you get a copy of this book.  I was on the underground and |I saw a woman reading this book - what caught my attention was that she was almost at the end of it and I was thinking what a delicious moment that is - the culmination of a story that has kept you rapt whilst it unfolds - and I found myself reading the blurb on the back and I was so intrigued that I wanted to read it. Then when I went to the library a week later, there it was on the shelf ... almost calling to me to borrow it!                  

In many ways the story is like a russian doll - one segment hidden within another, within another - but in other ways the action in  present echoes behaviour of the past - let me try to explain.  At first there are 3 central characters - Cate Albion, a young artist just returned from NewYork with a bit of a mystery surrounding her, is she home to "lick her wounds" or is she running away from something or someone?  Her aunt - Rachael has a thriving antiques business which she runs with Jack, a younger colleague, now that she is a widow.  Jack seems to be a self-elected loner, but when he is instructed by Rachael to drive down to Devon to catalogue the contents of a genteel palladian mansion with Cate - they find that they have a crackling attraction to one another, which they each find unsettling for different reasons.

Endsleigh house - this once grand home from a long dead era - is almost a central character in its own right!  It held secrets in the past and is still holding them now as Cate gains entry to  a locked and long-forgotten room and finds a box of mementos secreted behind a row of untouched children's books.  The mystery deepens with the information that the deceased owner of the house was one of the famous Blythe sisters - who were glamorous and notorious for their wild parties and lavish well-connected lifestyles between the wars - and Cate sets out to discover more about the younger Blythe sister who went missing and her final fate was never discovered .

The story of the Blythe sisters is told in a series of letters from the youngest sister - who known as Baby- to her older sister.  The language is pitch perfect and it provides a fingernail sketch of coming out into society as debutante - Baby blazes a trail which is sometimes "too much" for even her to handle.

The stories of the other 3 characters is told in a series of flashbacks and discoveries, there is a theme of infidelity and people coming to terms with the 'dark side' of their nature. The plot gives delicious glimpses of the past - the clothes, the decadence, the political machinations - which show it was not all dances and tea parties!  The Victoria and Albert museum, the National Portrait Gallery and Tiffany & Co are all utilised to assist Cate in unravelling the strands of the mystery of the shoe box she has found, and the author Kathleen Tessaro explains that she too was given a shoe box full of items to assist her in compiling her intriguing plot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9D9AiZCUSc
             
As I read this book I was strongly reminded of Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella - a more frothy, lightweight book for sure, but one with a similar socialite, 20's debutante as the central character, guiding the heroine with her insights and moral code from another era, and a hidden secret of its own which is pivotal to the plot.  http://www.sophiekinsella.co.uk/books/stand-alone-novels/twenties-girl/

I'm now inspired to read something that is written by someone from this era - I read Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford when I was still at school but next on the list is another by Nancy - ThePursuit of Love.

On an entirely different note - I promised you a review of the Peter James doorstep of a book when I finished it!!  Dead Tomorrow was a fast paced novel and a very complex web, tightly woven, but as usual it uncovered the seedy underbelly of crime, set in and around Brighton.  The subject matter was sometimes hard to read - a teenager near death with liver malfunction, others with no food and only handouts and drugs to survive on, debt collection and prostitutuion, but Detective Inspector Grace does not rest until he has meted out justice for the underdog.

The weather is getting colder ... so the perfect excuse to curl up on the sofa with a good book!  Just now I'm in the middle of a really chunky one, so I wont be able to post my thoughts on it until I have read it all, but I can certainly recommend the author - Peter James - as I have read 2 others by him recently and really enjoyed their fast pace and gritty storylines. The one I'm currently in the middle of is one of his detective novels featuring Roy Grace, but my particular recommendation is "Sweet Heart"
www.peterjames.com


This book was very suspenseful, there seems to be a malevolent force at work in the house which Charley and her husband move into - added to this they are in quite a remote location and lonely Charley is seeing therapists who are using hypnotism to help her increase her fertility - she longs to have a baby.  I love books with a time-slip element to them, and I enjoy a supernatural theme, so this book was ideal for me.  When Charley regresses into her past life, her memories are quite erotically charged and as she tries to cope with her new life and form new relationships there is sexual tension as well as a malevolent & haunting presence.  It was so gripping - I devoured it in 1 weekend!

This author was recommended to me by my good friend Simon - who makes sure that my reading list is not just chick lit and other-worldly reads, but is interspersed with action packed drama and crime novels!  Keeping it real!


TV - I am delighted that Downton Abbey is back for the autumn - such interesting people and stories and the icing on the cake are the lovely costumes and the fabulous period decor. The ladies are probably wearing the kind of glamorous clothes that my Granny used to wear and I love the difference between the above stairs and below stairs rules and dreams and relationships.  In the past I have Snobs by Julian Fellowes who writes the script for Downton Abbey, and he has such a light but illuminating touch as he weaves the story around with social/class interplay and saving face - the social layers in that book are very complex as it deals with the myriad subtle differences between the upper middle classes and the upper classes in twenty-first century Britain.  Downton Abbey is more straight-forward and clear cut with it's difference between the servants,the village folk and the family at "the Abbey" and all their posh friends. We imagine them as simpler times, but when you watch this period drama you realise that the opposite was true.

Two Broke Girls - Series 1 has nearly finished - the last one tonight.  I have enjoyed the comedy and wise-cracking dialogue in this series,  but I have to admit that it has lost some of the freshness & promise it showed in the first few episodes.  I'm one of those people who always wishes I had thought of a smart come-back when someone insults me or tries to put me down - So I long to be more like Max but I think instead I am really "vanilla" Caroline who has been so sheltered & spoilt she doesn't realise what real life is like until she hits rock bottom and has to rely on new found friends like Max to show her the way to survive.  I hope they make a series 2 and that they get back to the quality of scripts in the earliest episodes - the language can be coarse and the double-entendres aren't always subtle, but it is a favourite with me.
   

Back to being a Teenager!

Are you still a teenager?  I am not, but I really enjoy books which remind me of being one, hence my 2 recommendations on this post - each for very different reasons.

On holiday in August I read and was fascinated by The Amanda Project which is a very unusual concept - not only for the book/story itself, but for the website that fuels it and the way further installments (I believe it is an 8 book project) are written:   http://www.theamandaproject.com

So much more than just a book!

The book is told from the viewpoint of a teen named Callie, who has befriended Amanda - new to her school.  Callie has her own troubles - her mother has gone missing and she and her father are trying to come to terms with the fact that she may have left them. Amanda is absent from school, but it seems she has played a prank on the Principle's car and made the evidence point to Callie;  But not just Callie, also to 2 other students who are not in the same 'sphere' as her at high school.  The uneasy threesome start to work together to find clues to Amanda's whereabouts and the mystery and strangeness increases - Amanda is a chameleon - different things to different people and sometimes she seems to have 'borrowed' her new friends' identities.  As concern over Amanda's whereabouts and safety increases, the clues keep coming (from where?), the 3 teens become more bonded, they launch a web-site to assist in their search, and this website is real!  You (the reader) can visit it and add your own contributions to the fiction and the scrapbook style - Amanda's love of thrift shop items and drawings add visual interest to the book and the website contributions follow suit... and the story continues.

This was such an unusual book - I am sure it appeals to girls who like to watch American shows like 90210 and Pretty Little Liars but it is quite mindful of the hierarchy and social 'layering' which exists - and it seems to have a desire to encourage teenagers to break the mould and be true to themselves. Yes! it took me back to my 'yoof' a bit ..... but not as much as this next book which I highly recommend:

Growing Up Again by Catriona McCloud.  Have you ever found yourself thinking that you would love to have your teenage years again, but knowing what  you know now?  This book might make you think differently!!  Janie is nearly 40 and has just told her husband "it's over" and gone to sleep in the spare room - next morning she is back in the single bed in her parents' house, with a bad perm and double maths at school!!  Janie's adult thinking/plain speaking gets her sent out of class, soon it gets her parents passing furtive, worried glances at one another, but Janie gets on with re-living her teenage life waiting to see when she will return to her grown-up self.  Then she begins to wonder if she has to 'do something over differently' before she can return to the present .... and before long she has decided to take advantage of knowing the future - surely she can remember a Grand National winner or avert a disaster somehow!

Janie's story made me laugh to myself and sometimes out loud (people on public transport, avert your gaze - not only is that person reading instead of texting, now she is chuckling and wiping her eyes!!).  I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting chick lit which, in the main, takes you out of yourself, but has a thoughtful side to it also - people's attitude to addiction and downs syndrome get put under Janie's magnifying glass and her advice and opinions are fairly harsh!! I liked her - I wish she was a friend of mine!

I have some very good friends, actually - one lent me this book (thank you Anne - I brought it back home in my luggage from our lovely break in Sweden!)  and 2 more who I know would love this book (Michelle and Shelley - you gotta read it, trust me!)

Daughter of Smoke and Bone - read it!

This is such an unusual book - the blurb on the cover compares it with the Pan's Labyrinth and Northern Lights - but I am not sure that mash-up does the intricate tale justice.  Certainly you will need to have your imagination in full working order to truly enjoy this tale of portals into other worlds, chimaeras who have animal attributes and human features mixed and angels/ seraphs as vengeful warriors.  The language is descriptive without being heavy, incredibly romantic in places and at others the banter is witty and current. I found it easy to embrace the heroine of Karou, a 16 year old art student who feels lonely and incomplete most of the time - I wanted her to find love and understand the story of her past, and plenty of you will want to BE her before book #1 is over!  (not sure I could carry off the long blue hair!)

 

Daughter of Smoke and Bone  by Laini Taylor

I am eagerly anticipating the publication of the second book, Days of Blood and Starlight, due to be released on 6 November 2012.

















Before I settled down to read the above fantasy novel, I had a delightful trip to Shakespeare's Globe  with my Father.  Last year he and I took our first trip to this wonderful theatre - stunning in its authenticity - to see one of Shakespeare's comedies.  This year my Father recommended we watched "any play Mark Rylance was acting in".  Richard III it was then!

There has been a big "hullaballoo" about Mark treading the boards at the Globe - and no wonder!!  He was fantastic!  I like to prepare a little before I watch Shakespeare, I usually read a synopsis of the plot so that I will get the gist of the dialogue and action, even if I am struggling to grasp the meaning of all the olde english language.  I promise you, it was as if the other actors were speaking the words Shakespeare had written, and Mark - as the evil but charismatic Richard III - was speaking in modern day english, his delivery and acting was such that it was no trouble at all to keep up with his dialogue, He had the audience laughing at his audacity and wicked little asides to us about his plotting and scheming to eliminate or win over anyone on his fast-track to become king.  My Father and I highly recommend this play - not stuffy at all!

Hot Tips for August!

This week I have been highly entertained by 'Vexed' the second series - showing on BBC2.  It is an interesting comedy take on a detective duo - the girl is bright and driven and sporty, the guy is a complete MCP - a blast from the past in terms of his attitudes and treatment of women.  The rest of the cast appear to be 'playing it straight' but he is cartoon-like version of a TV detective and it is hilarious!  A favourite scenario was in the third episode when he is investigating a missing person and he and his partner visit the distraught wife on an information-gathering exercise and he cannot stop staring obviously at the woman's cleavage and he keeps implying that her husband is deceased rather than just missing.  Priceless - and his ability to jump to the wrong conclusions is epic!  Give it a chance - catch it on BBCiPlayer - I think you'll be pleased you did .

Reading wise, I have just finished re-reading Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie,  and  what a joyride of a book it is!!  It makes a great holiday book, not least because it is jam-packed with sex and gossip and small-town plotting!  I have very recently read 50 Shades of Grey (which I found slightly disappointing considering all the hype it has enjoyed) and I promise the sex scenes in this book are more frequent, more realistic, slightly less graphic and all the hotter for it!!

I have read several books by Jennifer Crusie http://www.arghink.com/   and she writes delicious heroes truly in the smouldering 'Darcy'style - and her male lead characters always know how to 'make the bed rock'!!  My Mother -a book reviewer and writer herself - introduced me to Jenny Crusie's writing and was a big fan  (being one of the Cherries on her chat forum), and I want to spread the word too about the classy wit in Jenny's books.  I would also recommend  'Faking It' and 'Bet Me', 'Tell Me Lies' and 'Fast Women' as fabulous books well worth a read.

I must highly-recommend 'Revenge' which I have been watching  avidly on E4 since the series began - I think we are almost at the end of the first series now - it is set in the Hamptons so the people are seriously rich, and many of them very powerful, but so many of them are badly 'bent' - they are evil  and devious, they deserve to get their come-uppance.  The lead girl and her arch nemesis are venal plotters, the like of which we haven't seen since Dynasty and Dallas - how delicious!! I see from Jennifer Crusie's blog she is as much a fan of this as I am - hurrah! we are kindred spirits on several levels (she loves Gilmore Girls too!!  woo-hoo!)

Emily-Go Girl!!  Get Revenge!

'Queen' Victoria - we are all longing to see her de-throned!!